DR DUBOIS ON PITHECANTHROPUS ERECTUS. 79 



this distinguished ordeal of the Fourth International Congress of 

 Zoology. 



I am very happy indeed that it is at Cambridge, whose University 

 has inscribed in its roll, amongst so many other distinguished names, 

 such a glorious one as that of Darwin. No one, I am certain, if he 

 were now amongst us, would have taken a keener interest in the 

 evidences, which it has been m)- good fortune to produce in the 

 favour of the application of the doctrine of evolution to man. For 

 Darwin as well as for Huxley " the ascertainment of Man's place in 

 nature .was the question of questions for mankind — the problem 

 which underlies all others and is more deeply interesting than an)- 

 other." 



Three years ago I had already pointed out, that I consider 

 Pithecanthropus ercctus as contributing in a large degree towards 

 that ascertainment. Consequent study fully bore out the views 

 then advocated by me. 



The details of the questions concerning the remains of that 

 species have grown very numerous, and it would be impossible for 

 me to point out, even in a cursory way, the conclusions to which 

 a closer study of them necessarily leads. I am now preparing a 

 larger treatise, containing a full description of all the remains, and 

 which will still, I hope, in this year be issued. To it I may refer 

 for a fuller treatment of the questions which I now only can shortly 

 point out. 



This is the reason why I propose to say but little about the 

 skull-cap and to cast only some indirect glances at the femur and 

 the teeth. 



Of the femur I want first to make this preliminary remark, that, 

 having now examined more than a thousand human thigh-bones 

 from different races and from many sources, and having made 

 further studies on the peculiarities of the Trinil femur, I am quite 

 certain that by some of its features this bone distinctly deviates 

 from any human femur. Moreover it appears to me beyond doubt, 

 that these anatomical features can be interpreted by a partial differ- 

 ence in the physiological function of the bone from that in man. 

 Though unquestionably PithecantJiropiis erectus had assumed a 

 very perfect erect attitude and his mode of progression, when 

 walking on the ground, was completely bipedal, still his lower limbs 

 were adapted at the same time to a tree-climbing locomotion. The 

 arms and the hands, not being entirely liberated from locomotor 

 functions, could not possess that perfection as organs of prehension 

 and of touch which they have attained in man, and by which they 

 " minister to the purposes of man's higher intelligence " (Turner). 

 A posteriori it appears quite impossible to me, and contrary to the 

 laws of correlation and harmony prevailing in the organic world, 

 that such an inferior brain as that of Pithecanthropus ercctus should 

 have been accompanied by legs and feet, arms and hands of an 

 equally high differentiation as that of the two pairs of limbs in man. 



